Glenn Block recently did a great screen cast on the Managed Extensibility Framework.
Show #130 | 11/26/2008
As I am sure you have heard, Netflix is moving over to using Silverlight for their very cool streaming video service. This is already the default experience on the mac, but if you are a PC user you need to opt in to this experience for now as they are doing a staged rolled out.
I have always found it is hard to make meaningful New Year's Resolutions. Lucky for me, I ran across this cool Silverlight Application that helps you find a truly meaningful resolution... if you don't like the one you get, just click 'Randomize' and try again!
Try your own http://resolutionrandomizer.pop.us/ecard.aspx... I'd love to hear what you get!
What were you planning to do March 18-20th? If it does not have to do with Vegas and the Web, it might be time to think again!
Mix09 is going to rock... I have had a chance to look at some of the sessions that are in the works (some of them haven't made it to the session list yet) and more importantly the new technology from Silverlight, to ASP.NET, to Visual Studio to Live\MESH work... It is going to be a rocking event.
Teams here at Microsoft are work enormously hard right now to finish up bits that will be given out and talked about for the first time at Mix! If you are a web developers, you should try hard to make it!
See you there!
The .NET Zone just published an interview with Kry and me. Check it out:
.NET Fireside Chats - Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina
You can learn some interesting stuff about what lead to writing the first edition of the book, what a 'Framework' is and what the hardest framework design problems are.
I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts
Oh, and they published a sample section of the book for free in PDF format. This is from Chapter 9 and covers LINQ guidelines.
Enjoy!
I love design patterns -- it is a great way to communicate among developers about the nature of a given problem area and what is likely to work or not. By using patterns, developers don't have to recreate the wheel each time.
The folks at infragistics have put together a UX Patterns site that is focused on share patterns in the UX space. Just as with code, using existing patterns can help you consider options, pick among standards and avoid recreating the wheel each time.
Use and Enjoy!
Check out the Quince site and of course, the Quince blog.
BTW, in case you think applying the 'patterns' concept to the UX space is stretching it, keep in mind that the roots of the term are in architecture.. check out one of my favorite books A Timeless Way of Building.
A couple of years ago we heard clear feedback from folks that they wanted to enable a very clean experience with launching a ClickOnce app from FireFox. James Dobson published FFClickOnce and got very good reviews, but we had many customers that wanted ClickOnce support for Firefox built into the framework… so in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 we added ClickOnce support for Firefox! This made ClickOnce apps much more accessible to a wide range of customers.
We added this support at the machine level in order to enable the feature for all users on the machine. Seems reasonable right? Well, turns out that enabling this functionality at the machine level, rather than at the user level means that the 'Uninstall' button is grayed out in the Firefox Add-ons menu because standard users are not permitted to uninstall machine-level components.
Clearly this is a bit frustrating for some users that wanted an easy way to uninstall the Clickonce Support for Firefox. But good news! We have a fix in place (enabling each user to uninstall the feature for themselves) and our testing team is making sure that is rock-solid now.. I expect that to be out in the next few weeks. I’ll be sure to post more information on that when I have it.
In the meantime, if you want to disable the Clickonce Support for Firefox here are the steps directly from the dev in charge..
Stop-gap Solution To uninstall the ClickOnce support for Firefox from your machine
1) Delete the registry key for the extension
i. From an account with Administrator permissions, go to the Start Menu, and choose 'Run...' or go to the Start Search box on Windows Vista
ii. Type in 'regedit' and hit Enter or click 'OK' to open Registry Editor
iii. For x86 machines, Go to the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Mozilla > Firefox > Extensions
For x64 machines, Go to the folder HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Wow6432Node > Mozilla > Firefox > Extensions
iv. Delete key name '{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}'
OR alternatively
i. Open a command prompt window (must be 'run as Administrator' on Vista and later)
ii. Copy and paste the appropriate command below and hit 'Enter'
For x86 machines:
reg DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions" /v "{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}" /f
For x64 machines:
reg DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions" /v "{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}" /f
2) Reset the changes made to the Firefox user agent
i. Launch Firefox, go to the Firefox address bar and type in 'about:config'
ii. Scroll down or use 'Filter' to find Preference name 'general.useragent.extra.microsoftdotnet'
iii. Right-click on the item and select 'reset'
iv. Restart Firefox
3) Remove the .NET Framework extension files
i. Go to the Start Menu, and choose 'Run...' or go to the Start Search box on Windows Vista
ii. Type in 'explorer' and hit Enter or click 'OK'
ii. Go to '%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\Windows Presentation Foundation\DotNetAssistantExtension\'
iii. Delete the 'DotNetAssistantExtension' folder and all its contents
